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Entering the peak weeks of school testing season, pressure from students, educators and community leaders for genuine assessment reform is accelerating as more people recognize how much classroom learning time is undermined by standardized exam overkill.

This week's wave of stories highlights the growing recognition that standardized exam scores are a poor way to measure progress of students, teachers or schools. That's a major reason why the assessment reform movement is rapidly expanding across the country.

This week's news stories -- from a third of all U.S. states and around the world -- shows the growing impact of grassroots organizing to replace high-stakes exams with better types of assessments. Policy-makers are clearly beginning to heed the "Less Testing, More Learning" message:

Defenders of test-and-punish policies who claim that assessment reform is limited to progressive coastal states should read this week's stories from places such as Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Utah. The push back against standardized exam overuse and misuse is truly an expanding nationwide movement.

The 2018 school testing season is already on the horizon. That means more local organizing against standardized exam overkill leading to heightened attention by policy-makers to assessment reform. As always, the more grassroots pressure, the better the prospects for meaningful change.

With stories about assessment reform appearing in fully one-third of all U.S. states over just the past week, it is clear that the movement to eliminate standardized exam misuse and overuse continues to accelerate across the country.

Week after week, news stories demonstrate the many ways test-driven schooling is failing students, families, educators and taxpayers. It's no wonder, then, that the assessment reform movement continues to grow across the U.S.